14.1 Introduction

The growth of online business over the past decade has been phenomenal. The World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners Lee as the graphical interface for the Internet. The first commercial website was developed in 1994. Since then the number of sites has multiplied so that almost every area of human interest is covered in some way online. In 2001 the estimates of the online population in the UK ranged from 14.17 to 18.8 million. In August 2002 the estimate was 17.9 million regular users, including work-based access. This is around 40 per cent of the UK adult population. Of online access, 62 per cent is from home computers and the remainder from work. This means that around 40 per cent of households in the UK are connected to the Internet.

These impressive figures are increasing dramatically. Most businesses are integrating online working practices within the day-to-day administration of the office. According to Xerox in 2001, the average UK office worker received 28 e-mails per day; this figure is higher than anywhere else in Europe.

Online advertising is the fastest growing advertising medium ever seen. In the UK, total online advertising spend grew from 154.7 million in 2000 to 165.7 million in 2001, a year-on-year increase of 7.1 per cent: an impressive figure, but only slightly more than 1 per cent of total UK advertising spending. However, according to the same survey Internet advertising overtook cinema advertising for the first time in 2000.

The development of broadband...